Newbern, Alabama
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Newbern is a town in Hale County,
Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...
, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the town was 133.


History

The area was originally known as Cane Brake due to the large number of
canebrake A canebrake or canebreak is a thicket of any of a variety of ''Arundinaria'' grasses: '' A. gigantea'', '' A. tecta'' and '' A. appalachiana''. As a bamboo, these giant grasses grow in thickets up to tall. ''A. gigantea'' is generally found in s ...
s in the area. The earliest known settler came to the area in 1816. The first grist mill was built in 1818, and the first store in 1829. F.A. Borden built the first post office in 1832, and became the first postmaster. Two of Borden's brothers came from North Carolina in 1834, and bought most of the land in the area. They organized a town named after
New Bern, North Carolina New Bern, formerly Newbern, is a city in Craven County, North Carolina, United States, and its county seat. It had a population of 31,291 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is located at the confluence of the Neuse River, Neuse a ...
. It incorporated in 1854. A railway running from Uniontown to Newbern started operation in 1859. The 9th Alabama Infantry Regiment was organized in the town in November 1861, to fight in the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. People from the town also fought in the Fifth, Eleventh, and Twentieth regiments. The town's economy was centered around
sharecropping Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a ...
until the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
. The
Rural Studio The Rural Studio is a design-build architecture studio run by Auburn University. It teaches students about the social responsibilities of the profession of architecture and provides good houses and buildings for poor communities in rural west A ...
of
Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...
was created in 1993.


Mayoral dispute

Patrick Braxton was the only person to file to run in the 2020 mayoral election, with incumbent mayor Woody Stokes III failing to file. Jude Arthur Crawford, the election official for Hale County, informed Braxton that he won by default and would need to appoint a city council due to there being no candidates in the local elections. Braxton was the first black mayor and appointed the first majority black council in the town's history. Braxton received the key to town hall from Stokes, but all of the records had been removed from the building. Braxton changed the locks to the building as Stokes gave keys out to friends. However, Stokes changed the locks and locked Braxton and the city council out of the town hall. Stokes and his allies refused to acknowledge Braxton as mayor and restricted his access to city mail and funds. Before Braxton was sworn in as mayor, Stokes and the city council held a secret meeting in which they held a special election and declared themselves the winners by default ten days later. No notice of the election was published. Stokes claims that they were "attempting to rectify a decades-old mistake by holding a special election". This council held meetings without Braxton's knowledge and removed him as mayor and appointed Stokes to replace him. Braxton and his city council filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in November 2022, stating that Stokes and his allies were conspiring to prevent him from governing the town due to his race. Braxton and his allies requested a special election to occur alongside the 2024 presidential election, but Judge
Kristi DuBose Kristi Kaye DuBose (born October 1, 1964) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Early life and education Born in Brewton, Alabama, DuBose graduated from Huntingdon College wi ...
ruled against them although she stated that they were "likely to succeed on the merits of their constitutional claim". A bench trial is scheduled for September. Elections were not held in the town for decades and Stokes' lawyers stated that they had not occurred for 60 years. They stated that the mayoralty "has simply been passed from individual to individual to anyone who would agree to be Mayor without regard to elections". On June 21, 2024, a settlement was reached in which Braxton would return to his mayoral duties.


Geography

Newbern is located at (32.594818, -87.535431). According to the
U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The U.S. Census Bureau is part of the U ...
, the town has a total area of , all land. The town is located in the geographic region known as the Black Belt, related to the fertile soil which attracted developers of cotton plantations in the antebellum years, and also to the population of enslaved African Americans who worked at those sites. Many areas of the rural Black Belt are still majority African American in population.


Demographics


2020 census

Newbern is part of the
Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal Plain, Gulf Coastal and Piedmont (United States), Piedm ...
Metropolitan Statistical Area.


2000 census

As of the
census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...
of 2000, there were 231 people, 91 households, and 59 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 110 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 22.94%
White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
and 77.06%
Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
or
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
. There were 91 households, out of which 38.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.4% were
married couples Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...
living together, 25.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.1% were non-families. 33.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 19.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.28. In the town, the population was spread out, with 32.0% under the age of 18, 6.5% from 18 to 24, 26.0% from 25 to 44, 18.6% from 45 to 64, and 16.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 83.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.5 males. The median income for a household in the town was $20,682, and the median income for a family was $31,042. Males had a median income of $25,625 versus $11,875 for females. The
per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...
for the town was $9,476. About 17.5% of families and 31.4% of the population were below the
poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...
, including 40.0% of those under the age of eighteen and 33.3% of those 65 or over.


Education

All residents in the county are in the Hale County School District.
Text list
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Notable people

* Frank Allen, former
Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
player * Henry Watson Jr., owned a cotton plantation in NewbernG. Ward Hubbs, ''Guarding Greensboro: A Confederate Company in the Making of a Southern Community'', Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2003, pp. 68–6

/ref>


Gallery

The below photographs were taken in Newbern as part of the
Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...
in the 1930s: File:FRONT ELEVATION - Presbyterian Church, State Route 61, Newbern, Hale County, AL HABS ALA,33-NEWB,3-1.tif, Presbyterian Church File:Front (east), north side - Baptist Church, State Route 61, Newbern, Hale County, AL HABS ALA,33-NEWB,2-1.tif, Baptist Church File:FRONT (WEST) AND SOUTH SIDE - Walthall House, State Route 61, Newbern, Hale County, AL HABS ALA,33-NEWB,1-1.tif, Walthall House


References


External links


Rural Studio

"He became the first Black mayor of Newbern, Alabama. A white minority locked him out of town hall. Now, Mayor Patrick Braxton has filed a federal lawsuit he hopes will make things right." by Lee Hedgepeth in "Tread", June 5, 2023
{{authority control Towns in Hale County, Alabama Towns in Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama metropolitan area 1854 establishments in Alabama Populated places established in 1854